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Androids

Submitted by cdxbow on Sun, 08/11/2013 - 17:55

Androids (人造人間, Jinzōningen; lit. "Artificial Humans") is a robot or synthetic organism designed to look and act like a human, especially one with a body having a flesh-like resemblance. Until the 24th century androids largely remained within the domain of science fiction, frequently seen in film and television. However, advancements in robot technology and artificial intelligence have allowed the design of functional and realistic humanoid robots.

TYPES OF ANDROIDS
1. Fully Artificial androids which were made up completely from mechanical parts and feature Quantum AI neural cores. Banned after the AI wars.

3.Bio Androids are made from an original living tissue as a base. Artificial animals are a type of bio android.

HISTORY IN FICTION

The word was coined from the Greek root ἀνδρ- 'man' and the suffix -oid 'having the form or likeness of'.

The term "droid", coined by George Lucas for the original Star Wars film and now used widely within science fiction, originated as an abridgment of "android", but has been used by Lucas and others to mean any robot, including distinctly non-human form machines like R2-D2. The word "android" was used in Star Trek: The Original Series episode What Are Little Girls Made Of? The abbreviation "andy", coined as a pejorative by writer Philip K. Dick in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, has seen some further usage, such as within the TV series Total Recall 2070.[6]

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the earliest use (as "Androides") to Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia, in reference to an automaton that St. Albertus Magnus allegedly created.[3][7] The term "android" appears in US patents as early as 1863 in reference to miniature human-like toy automatons.[8] The term android was used in a more modern sense by the French author Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam in his work Tomorrow's Eve (1886).[3] This story features an artificial humanlike robot named Hadaly. As said by the officer in the story, "In this age of Realien advancement, who knows what goes on in the mind of those responsible for these mechanical dolls." The term made an impact into English pulp science fiction starting from Jack Williamson's The Cometeers (1936) and the distinction between mechanical robots and fleshy androids was popularized by Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future (1940–1944).

Although Karel Čapek's robots in R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (1921) – the play that introduced the word robot to the world – were organic artificial humans, the word "robot" has come to primarily refer to mechanical humans, animals, and other beings. The term "android" can mean either one of these, while a cyborg ("cybernetic organism" or "bionic man") would be a creature that is a combination of organic and mechanical parts.

Authors have used the term android in more diverse ways than robot or cyborg. In some fictional works, the difference between a robot and android is only their appearance, with androids being made to look like humans on the outside but with robot-like internal mechanics.In other stories, authors have used the word "android" to mean a wholly organic, yet artificial, creation. Other fictional depictions of androids fall somewhere in between.[3]

Eric G. Wilson, who defines androids as a "synthetic human being", distinguishes between three types of androids, based on their body's composition:
•
the mummy type - where androids are made of "dead things" or "stiff, inanimate, natural material", such as mummies, puppets, dolls and statues

•
the golem type - androids made from flexible, possibly organic material, including golems and homunculi

•
the automaton type - androids which are a mix of dead and living parts, including automatons and robots[4]

Although human morphology is not necessarily the ideal form for working robots, the fascination in developing robots that can mimic it can be found historically in the assimilation of two concepts: simulacra (devices that exhibit likeness) and automata (devices that have independence).

THE FIRST ANDROID BODIES

During the 21st century the first, semi-successful attempts at making human like artificial bodies highlighted the deficiencies in processing power.

The first truly life like mechanism was developed late in the 22nd century

ANDROID BRAINS

By 2107, Prof. Kateryna Kovalenko used an array of Level 3 units, combined with the new programmable Personality/Emotion units, which overtime resulted in emergent level 4 behaviour, such as moral inquiry, humor and creativity. These traits probably resulted in their early reputation for instability. It took years of development to produce level 4 units small enough to be used in the work place, these were too big for a human like body.

The first miniturized Level 4 chipsets became available in 2142, these were the Intel PAI-4M, and there derivitives had sufficient power to enable the creation of the first proper androids in the 22nd century. These were the level 5 AI's were first developed during the 22nd century by Prof K. V. Chandra of the Martian Cybernetics institute. They were the first advanced quantum cores to be implemented, such a powerful device that could model many different complex systems, including the human brain. Overall their cognitive abilities could match that of human. The first miniaturized Level 5 was the AL 2169, which became the prototype for the famous AL-Mobile 228 core.